As I have told and re-told my story to friends and family in recent weeks, a theme has emerged. People have been telling me that I shouldn't regret my law career and accomplishments.

I want to make it very clear that I have no regrets. It is a huge accomplishment to graduate from law school. It is an even bigger accomplishment to pass the California bar exam on your first try. I am very proud to say that I had a successful law career for three years. During that career I chaired a trial. I helped numerous parents ensure the best interests of their children were met. I got a number of people divorced. I fought to get restraining orders for abused people and I helped a number of women break the cycle of violence and free themselves from emotionally, psychologically, and physically abusive relationships. I am exceptionally proud of my accomplishments. They are by no means a small feat.

If I had to start it all over again tomorrow, however, I would not.

As of tomorrow I will no longer have health insurance. I have been with Kaiser my entire life. I'm not a huge fan of Kaiser personally, I think they have a lot of flaws and I think health insurance is a real racket, but even with less-than-ideal coverage, having health insurance is better than not.

Of course now that I am unemployed my former employer is no longer paying for my health coverage. I received my COBRA packet in the mail informing me of my options there. While I find the COBRA packet about as perplexing as I found the EDD website, it appears to say the following. I qualify for a reduced rate from the rate my former employer paid. My reduced rate appears to be $287 per month. It appears that I qualify for this reduced rate because my employment was ended involuntarily, and it appears that this reduced rate is available to me for a temporary amount of time. I cannot tell whether that temporary amount of time is six months or eighteen months or somewhere in-between. And there also appears to be the possibility that I qualify for an even more reduced rate than $287 a month because my employer initially miscategorized my reason for unemployment.

For now and until I am able to look into it further, let's assume I qualify for COBRA subsidized health insurance of $287 a month. If you've been reading my blog you know that I believe I'll have "disposable income" of about $300 a month after paying for the necessities of my current life. And you are aware that I am likely dedicating that $300 to working to pay off my credit card debt.

It is certainly a sad state of affairs when a person has to choose between having health insurance and paying off their debt. It is a sad time for this country when it's neighboring Canada, many (all?) countries in the EU, even Israel, all provide public health care while America, the leader of the free world, does not.

I have a little over $11,000 in credit card debt. Now while I personally view this as a large amount to get out from under, I have learned in my recent research that this is a relatively small amount compared to most people today. Lucky me.

It should be noted that most of my credit card debt was incurred while I was in law school. Where my student loans didn't go far enough to support me, I supplemented with credit cards. I very rarely use my credit cards these days. Mostly they sit in a drawer where I can't access them easily, and I work toward paying them off.

Due to some mistakes that were made a few years ago (mostly late payments, sometimes 60 or 90 days late) as well as to high balances compared to available credit, the interest rates on my credit cards mostly hover around the 29.99% mark. This makes the $11,000 of debt actually a lot more (over time), and makes it so that making the minimum payments each month (or even double the minimum payments!) doesn't really do much to shrink the principal owed.

With a wave of impending plans and the world as my oyster, I set out on my adventure as a writer. Inevitably, concern rolls in.

Apparently it is not enough for one to be a writer. One must make money as well. Fair enough. I am sure that in the long run my writing will earn me a decent living. And I am aware that in the mean time a day may very soon come when I have to do other things to facilitate my writing career. I may need to wait tables or bartend, I may need to be an attorney part-time, or, preferably, I may do something else within the realm of my passion such as teaching writing classes or working in publishing.

OK, so my immediate plan is set, I have back burner ideas in place if and when needed, but there is something else. ... What was it? ...

Oh, yes. How does one actually make money as a writer?

Being successfully published is the easiest answer. There are superstars like J.K. Rowling (it took her five years to finish the first Harry Potter book, by the way). There are a plethora of others making less than Oprah but still earning a decent-to-awesome wage with their published books. And then of course there are those who complete novels but don't publish, and those who do get published but whose books don't sell. So even within the arena of published authors there is a sliding scale of pay range.

So there is the writing and sale of books. What else? Well, there's bloggers, newspaper columnists, magazine columnists, etc. How do these writers make money?

I've got a girlfriend in New York who falls into this category. She has her own blog that was opted for a book. She's technically making it. In the time she's been a writer in New York she's had a number of jobs in the writing arena, including working in a publishing house and for a magazine. So I know at least one person who is making it as a writer, and her path has inevitably required a significant amount of work other than writing.

I've got another girlfriend who is a professional blogger, employed for all intents and purposes by a blog. I don't know exactly what this entails, but I know she pays her rent and does not appear to be starving. I have no idea how she got that job or what her background was before being a blogger. I'll have to follow up on that one.

So of my two successful writer friends, both have some hand in blogging. I, of course, have this blog and another blog of my own, but these are strictly projects of passion. That is, I have no advertisers and make no money from my own blogs. But I am all for the idea of blogging elsewhere and earning my living as a writer doing so.

So how does one earn money as a blogger? Well I can tell you how one does not earn money as a blogger. My search today on this subject took me to a number of online blogging communities that have a hit-based commission structure. I'm not going to take too much time to explain it here. The bottom line is that most of these writers appear to earn a few cents or maybe a few dollars per article. They have to get millions of hits on a particular article if they want to earn any substantial amount of money for writing it. Oh, and a number of these sites require the writers to do their own marketing, seek out advertisers, etc. to increase the amount of money they can make per article.

If I wanted to go into sales and marketing, I would have gone into sales and marketing. I want to write. Can't I just write?!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the answer for today appears to be no, or, rather, not yet. One day I will earn my living solely from writing. I can't tell you what I'll do along the way or what opportunities and adventures will unfold for me. But I can tell you this: I'm more excited at the thought of working in a coffee shop to facilitate my writing career than I am at the thought of selling out my dreams for the idea of "security."

To say it was difficult to leave the warm sunny weather, paradise beaches, and great cheap food of Playa Del Carmen to return to chilly San Francisco is an understatement. To say it was hard to shed my vacation life for the heavy skin of office work is the understatement of the year.

In Playa I felt the freedom of the new life that I have chosen. I wrote, I read, I exercised my creative muscles. I lived the true excitement of the path that lies ahead.

It was odd returning to the office from vacation with only twelve days left of office life. And beyond odd, there is something of it that is akin to serving out the last days of a prison sentence. In a way, what is "only" twelve days seems like an eternity when I know that my freedom, my life, lies just beyond those twelve long days.

And something inside me has changed as well. What used to be small annoyances that came with the territory of my job today I found nearly unbearable. I am elated at the thought of the people and situations that I will never have to deal with again. And I am even more overjoyed at the thought of spending my days thinking, writing, and creating. I am more excited about the thought of scraping by on meager wages and filling my days doing what I love than I could ever again be at the thought of traditional success.

Countdown: Eleven days to freedom.

I am on vacation in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. This trip has been planned, in one form or another, for a year-and-a-half. It is poor timing that between buying the plane tickets / reserving the hotel and my arrival I was laid off. But the plans were set, I had vacation time to burn before my last day at work, and truthfully, I really need this vacation.

Still, it is a unique spot to be in. Even though we are in a third world country and our beach vacation is cheaper than most, it is still more costly than it would be if I were at home, collecting my nuts like a squirrel does for the upcoming winter.

Now is technically a time when I should be living small, financially that is, and saving. Very soon my paychecks will stop coming in.

As I'm in this tropical paradise, on a vacation I technically can't afford, spending money I should be saving for my very near future, my relationship to money is on my mind.

I know I can make life work on the very minimal income I will soon have. I know the sacrifices I have to make to live this way. I know that there will seldom be dinners out, that I won't be able to buy drinks at happy hour, that personal luxuries will have to be cut. And I am on board with this. The incredible freedom and opportunity that is mine as a result of my choice makes living on a meager income completely doable.

When I think of my relationship to money I realize that it is my relationship to other people that I fear having to alter. For instance, when I was looking to buy gifts for friends today my boyfriend said to me, "Your friends aren't going to expect you to get them all gifts. They know you're unemployed. You can't buy gifts for everyone."

In many ways I am more dedicated to my family and friends than to myself. I will sooner spend money on a gift for them, or buy their dinner when I know they can't afford it. And that has to change. At least for now.

I have to defer my student loans. I have to cancel my vegetable delivery service. I am going to be eating many of my meals from cans. So I certainly can't express love with money I don't have.

In one way this can be viewed as a sad reality, but I am not in the frame of mind where I wish to view anything negatively. I have been given one of the greatest gifts a person can be given in life - the opportunity to do what I love with my time - and whatever sacrifices I have to make for that reality are well worth it.

My lack of decent income will not last forever. One day I will be doing well enough that I can resume showing my love in whatever way I please. And when I do, I will be living my life my on my terms. And truthfully, the sacrifices I make along the way will only make me appreciate my success even more. It won't be easy, but it will absolutely be worth it.

I spent four years in law school (two while working full time), a year studying for the bar, taking the bar, waiting for bar results, and finding out I passed the bar, four-and-a-half horrible months of a near-hopeless job search, and nearly three years practicing law.

There was not a moment during the eight years that I gave to the law when I thought, "Yes, THIS is what I am supposed to do. I love this." No. Instead, I thought law school was the hardest thing I'd ever done, until I took the bar, and then I thought THAT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Practicing law was certainly better, but it was never my passion, and I always felt like I had sold out my dreams for security and financial well-being.

But why?

It's hard to remember the frame of mind I was in eight years ago when I decided to go to law school. But with some recent soul-searching and the help of a good book and a good therapist, the truth underlying my entire adult career life has become clear.

I gave WAY too much credence to the advice of other people. I listened when they worried I would never succeed as a writer. And I listened when they said, "Go to law school and the world will be your oyster."

Well guess what, the world IS my oyster, but not because I'm a lawyer. The world is my oyster because I finally woke up. Today I finally realize (albeit eight years later) that if I follow my passion, if I put my energy into the things I enjoy in life as opposed to the things that everyone else thinks are worthwhile, I will be far more successful than I ever was doing something I didn't enjoy.

I went to law school because I was afraid I would fail as a writer. I feared I would fail as a writer because everyone else feared I would.

Eureka, I finally get it! Those people who instilled fear in me, they were afraid. I am not afraid. I believe in my abilities, and I believe that if I put hard work into the things I am passionate about, I will absolutely succeed.

So I am done listening to the advice of others that comes from a place of fear and anxiety. I am about to embark on a journey that I should have embarked on eight years ago. I have been given a second chance, and this time, I'm listening to me.

Last night I debuted my blog on facebook. This was also how I outed myself to the world at large (or at least my facebook friends) as unemployed.

The response was what you would expect. A number of condolences, some hang in theres, a fair amount of surprise/tell me more, and, I would guess, not a lot of people actually taking the time to leave the comfort of facebook to read my blog. Oh, and I had a few congratulations/you are capable enough to do anything you put your mind to. These were the responses I valued the most, and they'll get attention in their own post soon enough.

One response to my post was a comment blaming my current predicament, which is representative of the current state of our country, on the baby boomers. I pondered for a moment, wrote my friend for clarification, and confirmed my suspicion that what he meant by this was that there are simply too many people in the baby boomer generation, those people parented my generation, and now here my generation sits: jobless, money-less, with uncertain futures, and being the first generation that is not expected to do better than our parents.

Okay, there is logic in this line of thought. There ARE a lot of baby boomers. The DID have a lot of kids. And those kids DO make up the current generation of laid-off professionals and the newly-graduated unemployed.

But really, what did the baby boomers do? They didn't choose to be born when they were. And you can't really blame their parents either- it is a human being's biological function in life to procreate (despite our having evolved beyond this in many ways). So who really IS at fault? Well, our government, of course.

That's right. The U.S. government chose to fight in World War II, and that war directly resulted in the baby boom. Were we a peaceful Utopian society I would still have a job today. Or I wouldn't exist. Either way, I wouldn't be writing about my unemployed life, and our country wouldn't be in this mess.

So the moral of this story is this: War is bad. Our government is corrupt. Down with the man, he ruins everything.

Today I ventured into the world of "what are my options." Since I have sent out about ten resumes in the past week without a single call or email in response, unemployment is a likely future. And since I went to LAW SCHOOL, it is not one I am familiar with or ever thought I'd have to be. So of course I had some questions.

My first question, naturally, was how much money will I get with unemployment, exactly? The answer, based on my attorney-income, appears to be $1,900 a month. Which is the absolute max a person can get in unemployment benefits. To many, many, MANY people in the world, this would be A LOT OF MONEY. To someone who has been living paycheck-to-paycheck making about $4,000 a month net, this means it is time to re-evaluate my lifestyle in a big way.

My monthly rent is $1,000; let's not even talk about my $130,000 in student loan debt! Therefore, $1,900 a month is not enough money. This is a problem. I happen to be trained in the business of solutions. What, then, are my possible solutions?

Thought number one: Perhaps I can supplement this income. Yes, that sounds good. I can practice a little family law on my own. No overhead, no office, no staff. Work from home, and make a little extra cash to bring my monthly income up to around what I was making when I was still employed.

No, says EDD. Well, actually, what EDD says is this: Go ahead, Pearl, make my day. You make that extra money. ... Go on. ... Good girl. Now, GIVE IT TO ME! Yes, that's right; every dollar I make while receiving unemployment benefits serves to reduce my unemployment benefits by that same dollar.

Tell me, please, is there a universe in which this concept makes sense? Is EDD encouraging me to work, in any way, by letting me know that if I work I will only screw myself out of EDD benefits?

Basically, unless I am able to make more than $1,900 a month and do away with the need for unemployment in the first place, working to supplement my EDD income is futile.

Under the table work is out - it's unethical and I'd lose my license to practice law. Independent contract work, selling oranges on the street, cleaning gutters - that's all off the table.

So my worst-case-scenario plan, as of today, is this: Live on $1,900 a month. Defer my student loans. Cut costs. Pay the minimum each month on my credit cards. Don't use the heater. Eat food from cans. Take advantage of the inevitable weight loss that comes along with not being able to afford to eat out or drink.

Oh, and write! Because I'm going to have a lot of free time. So here I am, friends! Embracing my unemployment future, and writing.

Yes, that's right. Yours truly, divorce lawyer extraordinaire, was laid off a week ago Friday.

Why would a stellar, talented, capable, amazing person such as myself be laid off, you ask? Here's the deal.

In our current economy, people can't afford to get divorced. Couples are staying together because they can't afford two separate households, they can't afford to deal with their worthless house, and they especially can't afford attorney fees.

My firm is like a ghost town. The phones are not ringing. There are no client intake appointments. Existing clients are finding ways to do much of the work on their own. And I, ladies and gentlemen, am therefore out of a job.

With my future uncertain, and trying to operate from a place of excitement over the possibilities instead of from a place of fear about how I'll pay my rent, I begin my journey in this unemployed life.

I invite you to come along for the ride.